Ring
by Penn Flinn
Summary: (n.) a circular or spiral course. In the aftermath of Savitar's return, Iris reflects. (Spoilers through 3x15)


**Spoilers through 3x15. I'll admit, I was in a really weird headspace when I wrote this. Hope you enjoy.**

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 _(v.) make a clear, resonant, or vibrating sound_

 _Who am I_? is a question that posits itself as meaningful—even more now, when every day it threatens to transform into _Who could I have been_? The answer, the one that makes sense, is this:

Iris is a journalist. Words are her water, and her thirst is ceaseless. She cups words from the stream of eternity and, like a scientist, studies the way the droplets cling to one another to form a whole. Meaningless hydrogen and oxygen, but life-giving as a whole.

She cannot find a word for the way Barry screams in the room next door, even after the blade has been wrenched from his shoulder. She hopes he loses consciousness soon, and she knows he must. She knows, too, that she should be in there, her hand as a grounding force instead of Cisco's, but she cannot endure the wails of agony.

She cannot find a word for the way Wally screamed. With the shock of Savitar's return, with the fear as Barry collapsed bleeding at her feet, with the deafening shrill of medical alarms, there has been no room to remember the pleas of her brother as he was dragged into nothingness.

She cannot find a word for the way she screams now, alone in a side hallway off the cortex. It is not pain. It is not desperation. It is not anything for anyone to hear.

In the creeping quiet of STAR Labs, the three screams echo in a dissonance.

 _(n.) a particular quality conveyed by something heard or expressed_

Dissonance, she thinks, taking in large gulps of air and molding her spine to the walls of the hallway. Dissonance, she repeats, staring into her hands like she might see the hydrogen and oxygen and everything that ties them together. _A tension or clash resulting from the combination of two disharmonious or unsuitable elements. The quality of sounds that seems unstable and has an aural need to resolve._

In her hands she doesn't hold the words, but she holds a story. The story that Barry put on her finger one eternity of a day ago.

Iris remembers when Joe sat her and Barry down with a jazz record for the first time. Listen for the dissonance, he'd said. Listen how it leaves you hanging. Listen how it defies all expectation. Listen how it should come together, but won't.

 _(n.) a group of people drawn together due to a shared interest or goal_

 _Who am I?_ is not an impatient companion. It waits, informed by the people who proclaim, _You are important. You are important enough to kill, or die, for._

This all started out as vengeance. Iris traces the walls of STAR Labs and knows that the girders and beams and plaster and paint are made of vengeance as much as any material thing. She never asked for vengeance, but she was injected into its midst when she was made part of this team.

The problem with vengeance is that as much as it takes, it also continues to give. Nora and Eobard and Eddie and Hunter and Henry. The rotation will not end until all of them are living, or all of them are dead. Vengeance breeds vengeance, and it makes people do things they shouldn't. Wouldn't. Can't. With one death comes another.

Her feet have left the floor, and she feels herself caught in the tide, drawn into the spin cycle by virtue of sheer proximity. It is unequivocal fact that there is no avenue of escape. Fate is always in the periphery: circling, circling, circling, encircling.

 _(v.) surround (someone or something), especially for protection or containment_

Barry tries so hard to help her survive. He doesn't understand that she is trying to live.

Iris West is a journalist. Iris West is a daughter. Iris West is a marathon runner. Iris West is coffee addict. Iris West is a widow. Iris West is a story. Iris West is trying to be better. Iris West is waiting to shatter the mirror that waits for her at the end of these two months and she is grieving a brother she met last year and she feels alive with a gun pressed to her chest.

 _(n.) an enclosed space in which a sport, performance, or show takes place_

Iris West is certain she will soon be the only one not to have witnessed her death. At this rate, all of Central City will have seen the knife cleave through her heart before she finally feels the pain of it.

She has not asked anyone about her death. Barry was the one to confess the method. Cisco was the one to disclose, one late night in the lab, how much Future Barry had screamed in the moment. Wally was the one to point out the details of the aftermath, the suspicious _lack_ on her finger.

If she had the courage, she might have asked about the last moments. Does she cry, plead, yell? Is she like Henry, or Nora, telling Barry that everything will be okay in the end? Does she think of anything but fear in those final moments?

 _Who do I become_? is a question perhaps not worth asking, and yet she cannot help but think that it informs every heartbeat.

She must not tell anyone that she feels like a bug trapped under a glass jar; a terminal patient behind locked doors; the only one not present when her future becomes everyone else's past.

 _(n.) a small circular band worn on finger as an ornament or a token of marriage_

Barry has stopped screaming, and Iris gives thanks for small blessings in a time that offers few. The lack of audible distress means that he has sunk into unconsciousness, blissful obliviousness—there is no room for pain in not knowing.

Iris places the wedding band on the table in the cortex. It is a collection of words itself, meaning without concrete expression, a symbol that extends beyond language itself. Like water in a stream, it has no clear beginning and no clear end, although the surface is sparkling and polished and transporting years of history. There are legacies etched into the molecules of the object, and yet, if it were to be lost, its past would be rewritten by the stranger picking it up from the edge of the sidewalk.

 _This is just the beginning_ , she wants to say—prophecies have begun coming true, Savitar has crawled from his living hell and Wally has been sucked into it—but there's no real beginning to eternity. They circle back endlessly, one decision creating another. They construct their own destiny by attempting to stop it. With each new action, they cement the future, which in turn circles back to cement the present, which again motivates them to cement the future. Over and over, like a song stuck in a seamless loop, losing more meaning each time repeats itself.

 _I am the future, Flash._ She heard Savitar's voice in Barry's comms, emphasizing the point. Words are her water, and she wonders if she is the only one to hear, instead, _I am the Future Flash_. Is she the only one to entertain the possibility? Is Barry is creating himself at this very moment, creating the monster that will return to destroy itself? With one last look, she turns her back, resolutely, on the band of precious metal on the table.

Isn't that what they're all doing?

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 **Thanks so much for reading. Please consider leaving a comment with your thoughts on the way out; I really appreciate it!**

 **Till next time,**

 **Penn**


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